A typical image-forming apparatus such as a printer or a copier that uses electrophotographic, ionographic, or magnetographic technologies frequently uses dry powder toner development of an intermediate image created in the image-forming process. Similarly, a printer or other image-forming apparatus that uses thermal inkjet or other liquid ink technologies uses liquid ink to directly form an image on a selected medium. With any of these image-forming technologies, a supply of powder toner or liquid ink is stored in a reservoir from which it is delivered to the image-forming apparatus. In addition to the toner or ink, a supply of print media is stored in an input tray or bin for delivery to the image-forming apparatus as a printing operation proceeds.
For the case of electrophotographic printing, for example, a photoconductor drum is first electrostatically charged. The photoconductor drum is then exposed to an image light pattern, such as that generated by a laser source, for example, which selectively discharges regions on the previously charged photoconductor drum. The photoconductor drum is developed by delivering electrostatically charged toner particles to the surface of the drum where the charged particles selectively adhere to appropriately charged regions of the drum to form an image corresponding to the image light pattern. The electrostatically transferred toner image is transferred to paper or other print media and is then thermally fused to the paper. Any residual toner is cleaned from the surface of the photoconductor drum prior to reinitiating of the image-forming process. Such a process is applicable to color as well as monochrome printers.
According to the above steps, it is clear that an adequate supply of consumable printer supplies such as toner or ink and print media is critical. A lack of toner or ink can result in the onset of unacceptable print quality with consequential waste of resources, such as print media, while unacceptable quality printing continues. Of course, a lack of print media, paper, for example, results in a suspension of the print job until the supply of paper is replenished.
Users appreciate knowing the amount of consumable supplies available in a printing device, especially prior to starting a print or copy job. This is particular true in the case of a "remote" printing device in which the user is working at a host computer that is connected via some type of network to the remote printing device. Typically, a networked remote printing device may be located several hundred feet from the user, or may even be located in another building. Since the user cannot view the printing device without going to the printing device, the user is, typically, unaware of the amount or conditioner of the consumable supplies available to the printing device prior to sending a print job. A frequent result of this unawareness is finding that the printing device ran out of ink or toner, or paper, in the middle of a print job when the user goes to the printing device to collect the print job. Typically, this results in a waste of both time and resources as the entire print job has to be printed a second time after the printing device has be replenished with the appropriate consumable supplies.
While most printers, copiers, and other imaging devices include the capability to measure or track and report consumable supplies such as ink or toner and print media, typically a "toner low", for example, or "out of paper" condition is not reported until the condition already exists. In particular, for most printing or copying devices, the only way that a user knows that the device is out of print media, is the suspension of the print job. Further, in most devices, the report is only made at the printer or copier control panel. Again, then, in the case of networked, remote printing devices, typically the user has no way of knowing the condition of the consumable supplies for the printing device prior to sending a print job without actually going to the device to check.
According there is a need for a user to know whether or not sufficient consumable supplies are available to a remote printing device prior to the user sending a print job to the printing device thus allowing the user to more accurately know in advance that the print job will be completed.